Monday, February 25, 2008

I should finally try to catch up with the blog. Since the last entry I got sterling silver wire 24 to 18 gauge (selling by the foot, ask for prices), some AB2X Swarovski crystals, mgambo seeds, and I started drilling those as well as double drilling Royal Poinciana seeds into spacer bars.I made one bracelet with some of those. As is normal with Job's Tears, they are very hard to match in sizes and so some of the spacers aren't at right angles (as you can see). It's for sale at $10.-.

I'm in the process of ordering some Ornela seed beads, mostly for a customer, but they'll be up for sale as well once I get them. We have a definite shortage of good seed beads here, the only (other) source I know of is Sara at the Hilo Farmer's Market. For the time being I only have some clear 8/0 beads at $1.-/0z, but they're not very regular.

Friday, February 8, 2008

2 orders came today, the one with the new pearls (200 strands this time) that spent 4 days in Nashua, NH, and also has some crimp covers, shell beads, coin pearls, and so-called mini-collars, 13 piece graduated size rectangular beads in several different gemstones. The other one has 24 gauge sterling silver wire, half-hard round, 5 hole daisy spacers and some more 4mm jet black Swarovski bicones as I use those a lot.

2 more orders went out today, 4mm Swarovski bicones in funky 2AB colors and more findings.

One more to do, Czech seed beads and Czech cut crystals. Hoping to get that done today or over the weekend.

Sunday, February 3, 2008

As the weather was really bad this weekend, and still is, I had some time to sort through some things and order a few more things. An order for more fresh water pearls went out on Thursday, some coin pearls as well this time (but unfortunately not at the same price as the other ones), and as I made a bracelet for a friend as a belated birthday present and ran myself almost out of 3 hole daisy spacer bars during that I ordered some new ones today, and not only 3 hole ones but also 2 and 5 hole ones. While I was at that I also ordered 24 gauge sterling silver wire, some sterling ear hooks and some small plastic bags. I hope the shipping on the latter doesn't make that close to prohibitive. I'm going to add another web page for "other" items, like tools, packing materials, etc.. I'm not sure yet whether I'm going to add the"one time only" items to that at some point. I have some of those now, as I found 2 heishi shell necklaces and a necklace made of metal spacer beads for sale somewhere, and while I'm sure one of the two spacer bead types used is base metal (6mm hollow round large hole, there's 34 of them), I'm not sure about the barrel beads because those are rather heavy, not very shiny and much lighter in color than un-plated pewter.

I managed to sort out the mixed color fire polished crystals and put them on the crystals web page - even if most of the other web pages still refer to that at "Swarovski Crystals" - that's in the works.

As the weather is concerned: Hilo set a new rain record for the 2nd of Feb. yesterday, 10.82", breaking the old one of 7.34" set in 1969. Waiakea Uka, one of the 'suburbs' recorded almost 19". We had somewhere on the order of 10 or 12, the Piihonua rain gauge (in our area) stopped either reading out or transmitting data some time yesterday - there is no data for us. We didn't lose power, we're not flooded - though the carport was for a while, which leads to flooding in one room if left to itself, and the cesspool filling up from the top when when water runs across the walkway for too long -, but we don't like it very much and neither do the cats.